Moncho Alvarado writes in response to Caroline Hu’s zine, Defense Mechanisms (self-published, 2019).
Homework: Conversation Questions for an ESL Classroom
1) How many more people do we need deported for it to be enough?
2) When zealots came over the Atlantic Ocean, Native Americans let them stay,
shared, but eventually the zealots stole their land. They stole land—
how do you steal land, when all of it is free?
3) The defense mechanism for possums is to play dead, what are yours?
4) What was Stephen Hawking dreaming the night before he died?
5) Grandma Conchita before bed would cry out to God “why, why this narrative of veins and skin?”
6) Cemanahuatl in Nahuatl means the universe. My Mom
said the universe is an infinite table, I feel I'm on the floor
cleaning up crumbs and dirt, dusting away debris from the big bang,
while people try to antimatter us.
7) Who picks fruit? Vegetables? The stickers say China, India, Argentina, Chile, Honduras, Mexico, has that changed how people eat & throw away things?
8) I wonder when folks will help out instead of complaining—wait, how long did it take for slavery, discrimination, xenophobia, homophobia to end?
9) How many true democracies are there around the world?
10) Hawking said, “We have 100 years left in human existence before we are doomed by climate change or we become a Level 1 species that is diverse, at peace, heading out to colonize our solar system.” Did he not read about Human history?
11) Maya Angelou said, “Love liberates.” Plato said, "Love is a grave mental disease." by the way, currently we are a 0 level civilization, when did Hawking start counting down those 100 years?
— Moncho Alvarado